Dr. Sylva or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Power

“Four fundamental pulls on an aircraft: weight, lift, drag, and thrust. They’re tied together in complicated ways. Don’t ask me how it works, because this is a first level physics class and all we’re doing is practicing drawing free body diagrams. If you want to learn more about it, I’ll be happy to take you in my engineering focus group starting next year.”

-Master Gerdelweis, delivering to Sylva the full extent of her knowledge of how aircraft work during her fifth year at the Academy. Sylva did not join the engineering focus group the following year.

Sylva and Iri took a long moment to process what they were seeing as information flooded the sensors of their little shuttle.

“I guess you were right,” Iri said.

“About what?” Sylva asked slowly, still gazing out at the star. It was far enough away that she could block the whole disc out with her thumb, but it was still very, very bright, even with the darkened window.

“About there being a star here,” Iri said.

“I guess.”

“That mind that you touched, it's what was blocking the light, right?”

“If it isn't, I don't know what could be.”

“Do you think that the Bellringer can still see us?”

“I'm sure it looks like we just disappeared.”

“Then they'll know something's up. I'll keep us accelerating.” They were pushed back into their seats with the force of it, but it wasn't overwhelming, only a little worse than what it felt like to lay on the floor.

“To where? There's, uh, three planets.”

In fact, they were quite close to the orbit of the third planet out, though it was a quarter of the way around the star from where they were. The other two planets were much further from them, the closer being approximately 1AU away, according to the information their shuttle provided. The cameras on board were able to determine the existence of these planetary bodies remarkably quickly.

“That one's definitely not habitable,” Iri said, pointing out the closest planet on the display. It was a gas giant.

“Just because there's planets doesn't mean that we're not still looking for a station,” Sylva said pragmatically. “What's the likelihood that either of the other two are safe either?”

“Since when are you the voice of reason?”

“Since we stopped getting shot at, now I have more time to use my brain.”

“Sure.”

“Can the shuttle's sensors tell what each of them is like?”

“We're pretty far out, the most we can get is approximate size and position. And even that, there could be more planets that are on the other side of the star from us that we can't see.”

“Can we pick up radio signals from here?” Sylva asked, fighting against the pull of acceleration to rub the sweat off her forehead. It was hot in the shuttle.

“Only if they're broadcasting it, and we'd have to be in the beam of it, so no.”

Sylva wrinkled her nose. “So we won't be able to tell where the people are?”

“We'll get close enough to that second planet to do a visual inspection, and maybe on the way we'll pick up some radio signals or, I don't know, some other sign of a station.”

“Such as?”

“Navigational beacons, mining debris, you know.”

“And how long will it take us to get to that planet?”

“Hm.” Iri consulted the shuttles inbuilt computer, which could take over for her as navigator. The math of flying a shuttle towards a planet was well defined, and easily computerized. Since they probably weren't going to be followed by the Bellringer anytime soon, they didn't have to worry so much about evasive actions. “Two days.”

“Fuck,” Sylva groaned.

“Any way we can go faster?”

“How much acceleration are you prepared to handle?”

“Whatever gets us there before the Bellringer does.”

Iri chewed on her lip. “They'll take probably two jumps to get there, since they'll have to jump past the barrier, then jump to the planet. So that's... twenty hours. I could double our acceleration, but...”

“Do it. They'll probably send out scouts to map this area before they jump in. That'll make it faster.”

“Yeah...” Iri fiddled with the controls. “That is assuming that planet is where people are. No way you can check with the power, right?”

“Not this far away.” 1AU was a pretty massive distance, all things considered. She was not up to using the power on that scale, and it was actually hard to imagine the mind that she had touched having enough skill to do that either. Maybe they were closer, and then they were back to the whole station question.

Maybe it would be best to wait for the Bellringer to jump in, and to watch what they did.

Or maybe that mind would reach out to Sylva, now that she had passed through the light barrier. That was a scary thought.

“One tiny problem,” Iri said, in a voice that indicated the problem was not so much tiny as it was gigantic.

“What?”

“Remember how our tail section got destroyed?”

“Let's hope it's a station, then,” Sylva muttered. Trying to get a ruined shuttle down through the atmosphere of a habitable planet was not really something she wanted to do.

“Let's hope. You ready for me to hit the acceleration?”

“I guess.”

Hit was the correct word. It was like being punched in the chest, as the engine slammed to life. If she hadn't already been pressed back into her seat she would have been bruised all over. Instead, she just felt like her skin was being pulled off her bones by the force of it. Her tongue was being pushed back down her throat, and she had to exert real effort to breathe and stop from choking.

“Is this safe?” Sylva managed to say.

“Unfortunately,” Iri responded, then fell silent.

“Can I sleep, or will I die?”

“You can sleep, for now.”

“Okay,” Sylva wheezed. She shut her eyes. They hurt from being pushed back into her skull, but there wasn't anything that could be done about that, aside from accelerating less, and she was the one who had suggested they go faster anyway. This was her own damn fault, then.

The thrum of the shuttle faded out around her as she sank into sleep. She woke hours later, and traded off with Iri, keeping watch. There wasn't much to look at, so she had plenty of time to listen to music and think. Thinking was bad, though. Anticipating anything that could happen in the future sent waves of fear through her body. It made her want to run around and scream, but she was as trapped as she could be, pinned to her chair by the force of her own body.

It took an excruciatingly long time to get anywhere.

They couldn't even see the Bellringer jump in. The ship was running cold, and Sylva had no way of feeling out a jump with the power, so unless the ship decided to silhouette itself in front of the star or one of the planets, there was no way to see it. So much for that source of information.

Iri did stop the acceleration a few times, so that they could get up, relieve themselves, stretch, and eat. Even without being pressed into their seats, though, the shuttle was cramped and dark, and the emergency rations onboard were stale at best. At least there were some. It would have been a miserable joke played on them by God if the shuttle they had stolen had been completely barren of food.

By the time that they arrived in the orbit of the second planet they discovered that they had two problems. The first problem was that this was definitely, definitely where the people were. The second was that this was a whole planet covered with people.

From orbit, they could see that this was a water world, covered in long lines of chains of islands, some very large, others barely visible from orbit. And on the side of the planet that was in the dark, there were dots of light showing human habitation. No satellites, no elevator, no ships in orbit, none of the normal things associated with inhabited planets, but it was habitation nonetheless. Sylva stared down at it, amazed.

“What is this place?” she asked. “Who lives here?”

Iri had a look on her face that seemed somewhat constipated. “I was hoping that it wouldn't be this.”

“And this is?”

“I can't find the best way to phrase it,” Iri said, voice strained. She no longer had the excuse of acceleration to make her sound that way. Now that they were in orbit they no longer needed to accelerate and they could drift freely about the cabin.

“Just spit it out,” Sylva said.

“Can't.” Iri rubbed the back of her neck, sweat visible on her forehead. “Sorry.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I'm not talking,” Iri said.

“Clearly.” This conversation was going nowhere. Sylva turned away from Iri in annoyance and stared out the window.

“Just think about it, okay?” Iri said.

Sylva was thinking, alright. She was thinking that Iri was about the least helpful traveling partner imaginable.

Then she was thinking that she was being uncharitable, because she wouldn't be here without her. But that brought her back to thinking that she didn't have a single clue where 'here' was, and Iri wasn't providing any hints, for whatever stupid reason.

“You're not like, my fourth year teachers. You can just tell me things without making me go through some sort of thought exercise. I'm not in the mood.”

Iri grabbed Sylva's shoulder and spun her around. It was easy in the zero gravity shuttle. She stared at Sylva. “I can't. Not I won't. I can't.”

“And that's meaningless to me, so I'm just going to ignore it and move on,” Sylva said, still huffing a little bit. “It's not like I have anyone to go spilling your secrets to.”

“Argh,” Iri growled, and shoved herself off the dashboard to return to her seat. “You're hopeless.”

“And you're infuriating, so that makes us both the worst.” There was a long pause as they both contemplated their failure to communicate.

“Now that we're in orbit,” Iri began.

“No, is the answer,” Sylva said, cutting her off. “I won't be able to find that mind, unless it reaches out to me. The only reason I could before was that they were so active on the barrier.”

That had probably been what Iri was going to ask, so she couldn't even be too mad about Sylva's preemptive answer. “How many people do you think are down there?” Iri asked.

“How should I know. Millions, definitely. That's a conservative estimate.”

Each of the islands on the planet had small but visible points of light. It wasn't the overwhelming brightness of things like Emerri's web of large cities, but it was enough to show population centers. Based on the lack of satellites and other space infrastructure, Sylva couldn't imagine that this planet had a lot in the way of heavy industry, because that tended to need mining, and definitely nothing in the way of trade, since that would involve being, like, known about...

And that all kept coming back to the question of what this place was, exactly. Pirates knew about it, at least a little bit. Enough for Starman to steal the coordinates from... someone. Someone who was interested in kidnapping Yan. But by time someone reached the point of populating a whole planet, they probably couldn't be considered pirates anymore, if they ever could have been...

How long had people been living here? Where had they come from? Why were they hidden? Was it some sort of rogue separatist colony that had been established in secret? An Imperial project gone wrong? Why take Yan?

The questions swirled around her with no clear answer. She probably wouldn't find out until they reached the surface.

And why was Iri acting so strangely? This was clearly something that she knew about, but was sworn to secrecy on. But if she had known about it, why hadn't she just gone here herself, without going through the trouble of stealing a ride from the Bellringer?

The concept of something that the all encompassing Empire only somewhat knew about, that would be hiding itself, that would strike and take Yan, that was something that refused to coalesce into meaning in Sylva's brain.

It made her feel like an idiot, and she hated that more than anything else.

Apropos of nothing, Iri spoke up. “Your mentor is Qwame Brache, right?”

Sylva was completely startled by the question, so much so that she forgot that she was angry at Iri for a second “Was is probably the more correct term, at this point. But yes. Why do you care?”

“Did she tell you anything before you left?” Iri asked.

“No. I mean, she showed me how to do some sort of crazy power trick that I swore I wouldn't ever use, but other than that, no. You're still not telling me why you care.”

“Did she indicate that she knew more than she was telling you?”

“Have you met Brache? Have you ever talked to her? She's all over the place when she talks.”

“No, I've never met her,” Iri said. “I only know about her through third hand connections. She's got a lot of information. I just figured she might know more than she told you, or told you more than I thought.”

Truthfully, Sylva was struggling to remember what had been said in the last conversation she had had with her mentor. It had been a long time ago, and she mainly remembered the miserable meditation and the splitting headache Brache's last lesson had taught her.

“She does have access to a lot,” Sylva admitted. “But you're here hinting that there's some major conspiracy among the top level of the Empire, that everybody knows about but no one talks about.”

“I wouldn't say everybody,” Iri said. “But I know about it, and Brache certainly does. Yan did.”

“How come you can talk about it in this vague way?”

“I can agree with things that you draw your own conclusions on,” Iri said. She spoke slowly, as though every word she chose was measured.

Sylva slowed down and tried to process the things that Iri was actually telling her, and not the things that she was (mis)interpreting. “When you say you can't tell me, that's like a social obligation type can't?”

“If it were, I think we're long past the point of being socially obligated to keep the secrets of our former employers to each other. I've told you the big secret I'm not... unable... to tell you already.”

“Wait, what?”

“About First Sandreas and Halen.”

“Oh, that. I forgot.”

“Your brain is a wonderful tool, should you choose to use it,” Iri said.

“So it's more like a coercion that's stopping you?”

“Of a sort. We're far away from anyone who could be coercing me, though.”

“I mean, when you get back.”

“I was already fully prepared to be dragged before a tribunal about this,” Iri said. “But sure. Let's call it coercion.”

“Physical? Financial?”

“I don't get paid enough to have money hung over me as a threat,” Iri said with a slight laugh.

“But you're like, the strongest person I know. Are people threatening your family?”

“When did I ever tell you about my family? But no.”

“You mentioned your brother was taking care of your dog at one point.”

“And yet you don't remember salient information about important government secrets I've told you,” Iri said. “Your mind is truly a mysterious place.”

“Unless you're prepared to say something useful, I'd rather you didn't talk.”

“Rude.”

“Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence. Iri's insult had succeeded in derailing the conversation, which hadn't particularly been going anywhere useful. “Can you see into my mind?” Iri asked, again, completely out of the blue.

“No,” Sylva said. “You're not a sensitive, and even if you were, there's nothing I suck at more than meditating.”

“Hm. Part of me wishes you could.”

“You don't want me messing around in your brain, trust me.” Sylva stared out the window. This conversation was doing nothing but bring up her many inadequacies. “Can we refocus on the problem?”

“I'd love to,” Iri said.

“Great. So question number one, obviously, is how in God's name we're going to get down to the surface.”

“You're not going to like what I have to say,” Iri said.

Sylva was already shaking her head. “No, no, absolutely no.”

“There's no other way. You either use the power or we die.”

“Not necessarily. The shuttle isn't, like, structurally damaged. We just don't have atmospheric steering.”

“Ah, yes, steering, that least vital component of navigating a ship down from space to the ground, on a planet with nothing but water and tiny islands.”

“Do we have any life rafts on here? We could do a targeted entry, then just try to crash into the water somewhere strategic.”

“The words 'strategic crash into the water' do not exactly fill my heart with confidence,” Iri said. “Also, I'm not sure if it's true that the shuttle isn't structurally damaged. If the tail part that got hit is connected to the heat shield, we could have problems.”

“It's almost definitely not, if you think about the aerodynamics of the situation,” Sylva said. “Heat shield on the bottom, tail on the top, right?”

Iri rubbed her forehead. “Okay. I guess step one is investigate the heat shield.”

“Not it,” Sylva said.

“Yeah, it's not like the spare suit in the back has any hope of fitting you,” Iri said.

“How come you get to be so tall? Life's not fair.”

“Just the luck of the draw,” Iri said. “But seriously. If it's damaged, you really are our only hope of getting down there.”

“You think I can make a heat shield out of thin air?”

“No? What I'm saying is that you could slow our descent to the point where heat isn't an obstacle.”

“Honestly, making a heat shield out of thin air might be easier.”

Iri reached over and grabbed Sylva's shoulders, shaking her a little bit. “Sylva, this is not the time for you to be wishy washy. Get over this insecurity you've got. We don't have a choice.”

Sylva tried to pull herself out of Iri's grasp, struggling against her heavy hands, but she couldn't. Iri held her tightly. Sylva glared at her.

“That's easy for you to say. I don't like putting our lives in my shaky hands.”

“Your shaky hands have done a whole lot worse. You didn't kill Keep, you won't kill us.”

“It's not that simple.”

“If you need some time to practice moving the shuttle around, now's the time. I can shut off autocorrect on the engine for a while, and you can see how well you can wiggle us around.”

“You don't think that because we're in it, the power won't like me touching it, do you?”

“I've seen people get lifted up by their clothes. Same concept,” Iri said. “You can make things hover in the air easily enough, I've seen you do it. This'll be the same thing.”

Sylva clenched and unclenched her fists, avoiding looking into Iri's eyes. She stared at her nose, the wisps of her hair, her sturdy neck, her chapped lips. “I'll try,” Sylva finally said. “But if I die, it's your fault.”

“I'm not sure where you get that line from,” Iri said, dropping her arms and letting Sylva go. “But I'll take it, if that's what it takes. Don't practice yet. I'm going to go out and check the heat shield.”

Sylva nodded, and drifted herself back into her chair. She stared morosely out the window as Iri got dressed in the spare spacesuit in the back of the shuttle. It was a one size fits most affair, and those most were spacers, so it would have been very, very loose on Sylva. Not ideal for navigating around outdoors.

Iri came back to the front before she put the helmet on. “You okay?” she asked. “Sorry if I was hard on you.” She looked absolutely dorky in the bright orange suit, but the way she held the helmet under her arm was a bit endearing.

“No, it's alright, I could probably use more people telling me the rude truth,” Sylva said. “Even if I hate it.”

“Sure. I'm just being mean because, ugh, you know why.”

Sylva nodded. “Need me to do anything while you're out there?”

“Just keep me company on the coms. It's creepy to be out there alone.”

“Of course.” If Iri was just apologizing so Sylva wouldn't give her literal radio silence while she was out there, that was fine. Sylva could deal with that.

Iri headed back to the airlock in the back of the shuttle and crammed herself in. Sylva heard the doors open and shut, and the radio click to life. “I don't need to press any buttons, right?”

“Please do not press any buttons,” Iri said. Her voice hissed with static.

“Not even this one?” Sylva asked, joking.

“Not in the mood,” Iri said shortly. Her breathing was audible as she climbed out of the airlock and hoisted herself around the sides of the shuttle to examine the damage.

“The tail is destroyed,” Iri said.

“We could see that already.”

“I mean it's not going to provide any stabilization at all,” Iri clarified. “And it's probably going to get worse on reentry.”

“How's the heat shield?”

“I'm getting there.” More breathing as Iri clambered hand over hand down the sides of the shuttle towards the underside.

“There yet?”

“Patience is a virtue.”

“Sure. But not one of mine.”

“Hah.” Iri was quiet for a minute more, with just the sound of her sweaty breath catching in her suit's microphone. “It looks fine,” she finally announced.

“Fantastic.”

“I mean, that just says we'll probably, maybe, hopefully, survive reentry.”

“You coming back in?”

“Yeah. Be there in a minute.” Sylva once again heard the shuffling of the suit and Iri's breathing as she went back towards the airlock and stuffed herself inside.

“Now that you're back in, I can practice rattling the whole ship around,” Sylva joked as the airlock filled with air.

“Please wait until I'm out of this suit and in my seat,” Iri said. “I don't particularly fancy getting my neck snapped by you tossing us around, or me throwing up in this helmet.”

“If you trust me so little to even practice, I'm not sure what that means for the real thing.”

“I'm hoping you'll get all your mistakes out before we're plunging down through the atmosphere,” Iri said. The airlock finished cycling, and Sylva turned around to watch Iri climb out of the little space. She pulled the helmet off and shook her head, hair stuck down to her face with sweat.

“Tough out there?” Sylva asked.

“Suit cooling wasn't working the best,” Iri said. “Makes life pretty difficult.”

“Thanks for taking one for the team.” Sylva paused. “Do you actually think I can stop us from crashing?”

“Doesn't matter what I think,” Iri said. “But yes. You haven't failed us fatally yet, and there have been plenty of occasions where you could have.”

“Only a matter of time.”

“Just think,” Iri said. “As soon as we get Yan back, we can have her handle all the power nonsense on our return trip. You'll never have to worry about it again.”

Sylva smiled a little. It seemed unlikely that they would find Yan in any condition to use the power. After all, if she had been able to, she would have used it to escape long before now.

Well, actually, the thought came to Sylva that maybe Yan had escaped, but she hadn't been able to get off planet. This place was disconnected from the rest of the universe, it seemed like. And even if one could build a stardrive, which she doubted Yan would risk doing, a stardrive did not a ship make.

That was an intriguing line of thought, but it was one that would have to wait until they got down onto the planet's surface to investigate.

“You know this wrecks our original plan, right?” Sylva asked. “The one where we're going to take the shuttle and hide out in space.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Do we have a solution for that?” Sylva asked.

“We'll pay that bill when it comes due,” Iri said. “For now, let's just continue to bank on the assumption that someone will receive our message and come looking for us.”

Iri floated in the back of the shuttle and stripped off first the spacesuit, then peeled down her sweat drenched jumpsuit, tying the arms around her waist and leaving her wearing just a bra on top. Sylva could see the fine but dark hairs that climbed up her stomach, and the line where her ribcage ended, rising and falling as she breathed. It was hot inside the shuttle, wasn't it?

Iri didn't seem to mind Sylva looking, and in fact didn't even really notice it. She pulled herself forward along the ceiling of the shuttle and slid into the pilot's seat next to Sylva. “If we're going to do this, we might as well do it,” Iri said. She strapped herself in, making sure to fasten the seatbelt extra tightly.

Sylva followed her lead and wedged herself into the co-pilot's seat as tightly as she could. “I'll try to get all my mistakes out now,” she said.

“Just as long as you don't send us crashing through the atmosphere, that's fine by me.” Iri pushed a few buttons on the dashboard and the intermittent hum of the shuttle's engine fell completely silent. “But if you don't mind, I'm going to close my eyes.”

“Wish I could do the same,” Sylva said. She gripped the sides of her chair and glanced over at Iri. She was sitting with her head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. The slightly bumpy line of her neck was silhouetted against the side window of the shuttle, where the star's light poured in. It caught the edge of Iri's whole figure until it was covered up by the chair.

Sylva turned away and stared out the front window at the planet below, absorbing the glittering lights of the islands, a massive storm system coming down on one side, the greenish blue of the water where the light hit it.

“You going to do this or what?” Iri asked.

“Shush, I'm concentrating,” Sylva said, even though she had been doing no such thing. She did try to concentrate now, and as the planet passed visibly by underneath them, Sylva stretched out her awareness through the shuttle.

It was difficult to move things without a frame of reference, she discovered. The planet was too far away to provide anything meaningful in terms of one. The only reason she knew she wasn't moving the shuttle was that she wasn't feeling them get jerked around inside of it.

She gave up on looking out at the planet and closed her eyes. The power swirled distractedly, much like the storm clouds below. She didn't want to land in that. And if she didn't want to land in that, or in the middle of the ocean, she was going to have to learn how to steer.

She could move things in space. She had moved those missiles, after all. This was basically the same thing, right? Just because she was now planning to ride that missile down to the ground didn't mean that it wasn't the same movements. Just like hovering a book in front of her, or moving a microphone up into the corner of a room. The same motions. The power didn't care about size, only her brain did.

Sylva's brain was a fiddly little thing, but she wasn't going to let it get the best of her. Not this time. The shuttle jerked hard sideways, as though they had been hit with something. Sylva and Iri both slammed into their restraints.

“I sure hope that was you,” Iri said, opening her eyes to flashing warning lights on the dashboard.

“Yeah,” Sylva said, rubbing her arms where the straps of her chair had cut into them.

“Great. Be more gentle next time.” Iri closed her eyes and leaned back again.

“I'll try.”

Sylva felt slightly more confident, now that she knew that she could physically do this. That sudden jerk, as painful as it had been on her body, was like a floodgate that spilled open and allowed her to move the shuttle. She just had to remember how it felt, and tweak that.

So she practiced. She moved it in every direction, quickly, slowly. She even made sure to twist it, only sending it into a sickening roll one time. After an hour or so of practicing, she felt confident about her maneuverability in space, though she didn't know how that would translate once they got into the atmosphere and really got going fast. Theoretically, she would only want to move up and side to side. That really limited the motions that were “realistic”. She made sure to practice those the most.

By the end of it, she was as sweaty as Iri had been, and she had ground her teeth so much that her jaw hurt. Iri watched her with some consternation.

“Will you forget how to do this if you take a nap?”

“Doubt it,” Sylva said, popping her jaw.

“Then you should take one. I'll need time to gently put us in position to descend,” Iri said.

“Do we have coordinates for where we're going down?”

Iri pulled up a map of the planet on the computer. It wasn't much of a map; it was all just pictures of the planet that they had been taking, wrapped around the surface of a sphere, but that was fine. She spun the sphere around and zoomed in to point at an island.

“I'd like to get us here, or at least in the water around here. It's close to the biggest population center,” Iri said, pointing at a different island where the lights were thickest. “But it itself seems relatively uninhabited.” There were still lights dotted on the edges of that island, but they weren't the big blotch like the few things that looked like cities were.

“And we're sure we can ditch in the water? We have a life raft? Or does this thing float?”

“Even if we didn't, I'd trust a water landing better than a ground one. Softer, you know,” Iri said. “But yes, these space-to-ground transports have water landing procedures. According to the information on here,” she poked around in a few other menus. “There's inflatable pads that do pop out from the sides if we hit the water, and there's a life raft stored in the back.”

“You check that there is one before you aim us into the ocean,” Sylva said. “I don't want to make it all the way down just to drown.”

Iri nodded, a tight smile on her face. “I will while you're asleep.”

“Don't let me sleep too long,” Sylva said. She was exhausted from using the power, but they needed to get down to the surface as fast as they could. They had no idea what the Bellringer was up to, and every second they delayed was another second that something bad could be happening.

“You get two hours,” Iri said.

“Perfect.” Of course, she was likely to wake up with a terrible headache and an upset stomach after a two hour nap, but that was the way life was, and she'd rather have that than nothing at all. Who knew when she was going to be able to sleep again.

Sylva got herself into the most comfortable position as she could and closed her eyes, listening to Iri press buttons and the shuttle's engines grumble back to life. She felt acceleration push her ever so slightly back into her chair, and she leaned into that feeling, nestling her head into the headrest. She tried to sleep, but mostly dozed.

And then it was time. Sylva's eyes were still bleary with half-sleep, but Iri handed her a cup of instant coffee in one of the zero-gravity packs, and she drank it. The bitterness of it made her stomach churn a little, and she also ate some of the too-dry packaged ration bread. They were mostly silent as they did their final preparations. There wasn't much left to talk about.

Iri showed Sylva how to extract and open the life raft that was stored in the back, and also pointed out a few key instruments on the control panel, should Sylva find them useful to look at during their descent. Sylva didn't thinks she would. She knew it was going to be just enough to stop them from either ending up wildly off course or crashing directly into the ocean without the chance to slow and stop.

The shuttle's stubby little wings would help, of course. They could at least slow the descent, but they couldn't turn well. And if the shuttle crashed into the side of a mountain because they couldn't avoid it, that would be pretty bad. And that was what Sylva was for. Get them down onto the surface of the water, near enough to an island that they could boat there, all as gently as possible.

Far easier said than done.

They made their final preparations, got fully dressed, and tucked their most important belongings right next to the raft, should they need to grab them in a hurry. Then they strapped themselves in and Iri began the descent.

“Here we go,” Sylva said. She wasn't even sure if she said it out loud, it was just the thought that was ringing through her brain as they felt the first touches of atmosphere grab hold of their shuttle.

Watching out the window, the whole thing lit up as the friction of their descent sparked and crackled against the windshield. They rocked and jittered and were pressed into their seats. Sylva's teeth rattled and the roar in the cockpit was indescribable. They were going fast. She didn't know if it was too fast.

The tail would have controlled their pitch and yaw, but in its absence, and with the force of the atmosphere pressing on where it should have been, they began to veer off course. The nose of their craft began to tilt upwards.

“Sylva...” Iri got out between her own clacking teeth. “Now would be a good time to do something.”

Sylva couldn't think straight. The power streamed past her fingertips like the air streamed past the nose of their shuttle. They were headed down.

The ground swelled beneath them, still far above the wispy clouds. The sun was going down in this part of the world, and it lit up the ocean underneath a bright red, burning the water. They were only speeding up, not slowing down. What was terminal velocity in a craft like this?

Sylva closed her eyes, blocking out the bright outside light, scrunching up her face and holding on for dear life. She felt like she could hardly breathe. She needed to do something. She needed to do anything.

There was a calm place, somewhere inside her brain. That was the place that accepted that she was probably going to die here, crashing into the ocean of this alien world, without having accomplished anything, killing Iri with her in the process. That would be bad, but, Sylva thought, maybe not the worst thing that could happen to a person. At the very least, they had gotten their message out about Yan's coordinates. Someone would find their starchart message, someone with better resources, and they would get Yan back. That was fine. So whatever happened to Sylva at this point, it didn't matter that much. Her heart was beating out of her chest, but her thoughts slowed to a fixated crawl on this point. She took a deep breath.

The power was at her fingertips. She shoved it down into the metal of the shuttle, hauling backwards as hard as she could, slowing them down. She didn't know enough about how aerodynamics worked to understand that slower moving objects generate less lift, but even if she had she would have done it. She was more worried about their horizontal speed than she was about their vertical speed.

The shuddering through the whole body of the shuttle continued, but changed as Sylva hauled them slower and slower. They were still falling wildly through the atmosphere, passing through the uppermost layer of clouds, nose pointed crookedly forward.

Sylva had to open her eyes to steer. She accidentally spared a glance sideways at Iri, who was as pale as a ghost, mouth open slack jawed, eyes wide. Her hands were loose on the yoke, which Sylva saw was flopping around uselessly. There was no mechanical steering that Iri could do. Red alarms were flashing all throughout the cabin, but that was such a normal sight at this point that Sylva tuned them out. She was worried about Iri, but had to focus. Focus.

She used the power to knock the ship sideways, getting its nose back onto the course that they were aiming for. It sent a shock deep into her bones as she snapped against her restraints, but it couldn't be helped. Then she tried to use the power a little more carefully, trying to grab just the nose of the ship. She couldn't quite do it, got the whole forward section, and hauled upward, trying to angle them the right way so that they would slow down further. Too far. She couldn't see the ground.

The instruments on the dashboard were going crazy, spinning wildly. Some had probably been in the tail section and were destroyed. Didn't matter. She didn't know what they meant anyway.

This was going to be less of a landing and much more like a crash.

Sylva gave up on trying to follow the mapped path and just did her best to slow them down. They passed through more clouds, all lit up blood red by the sun.

At what point, Sylva thought, had the star become a sun to her? Was it the moment they passed through the atmosphere? Was she the citizen of a planet if she died there?

She slowed them down horizontally as much as she could, though they continued to plummet vertically. Sylva hauled upwards, too, fighting to overcome gravity and momentum. She had almost made a difference.

“Sylva!” Iri shrieked. There was the altimeter. There was the ground.

They hit the water hard, but at least they hit it belly first rather than nose first. The shuttle groaned, not meant for such an impact, and skidded across the surface of the water.

They were lucky, in that their seat restraints were designed to break as few bones on impact as possible, but that didn't mean much at the speed at which they hit. The restraints sliced through their jumpsuits like knives, lacerating Sylva's arms and dislocating her left shoulder. Her neck slammed forward, wrenching it terribly. She hardly even noticed the pain for a few seconds after impact, the adrenaline and the rush of not being dead were too much.

Half of the instruments on the dashboard were dead. The other half were... well it didn't exactly matter now. This shuttle would never be flying again, and they needed to get out of it as fast as possible. The inflatable balloons that were supposed to come out in the case of a water landing had only deployed on one side, so the whole shuttle was leaning dangerously.

With weak and bloody fingers, Sylva undid her restraints. It was weird to feel gravity again, disorienting in the sideways cockpit.

“Iri,” Sylva said, clambering out of her chair and half falling onto Iri's limp body. “Iri, get up.”

Iri was breathing, but that was the most that could be said about her. Sylva shook her shoulder, noticing that she had the same wounds from the straps cutting her. Iri didn't respond for a long moment, and by that time Sylva was already at work trying to unfasten her from the chair.

Iri's head lolled to one side, and she blinked at Sylva.

“Iri, get up,” Sylva said. Iri struggled to move, and Sylva ended up having to wrangle her arm out from where it was trapped among the tangle of the chair harness. She hauled Iri to her feet, and Iri leaned heavily on her for a second, seeming very disoriented.

The shuttle creaked and groaned around them, tilting more and more every second. Sylva half-dragged Iri to the back of the shuttle. Their footsteps only seemed to tilt the thing more. She hauled on the airlock door, then the other airlock door, the one to the outside.

Her first taste of this planet's air hit her just as cold water did, rushing into the cabin. Sylva took the inflatable raft in one hand and shoved it out the door. The water was up to her thighs, but getting deeper every second as it dragged the unsupported half of the shuttle down.

“Come on, Iri!” Sylva yelled. Iri seemed to be in a sort of stupor, not really understanding what was going on, but the water posed an imminent threat to her life. Sylva pulled on Iri's arm, which was quite floppy, and hauled her towards the open airlock. They made it outside, and Sylva pulled the ripcord on the inflatable raft. It exploded outward, smacking her in the face, but it inflated. That was good.

It seemed that the shuttle had stopped sinking, being held up by its half inflated landing gear. The danger was at least a little less, now, but that didn't mean that they didn't need to get into that raft.

Standing on the edge of the airlock, the water was at Sylva's waist. With her one good arm, she held the raft.

“Get on, Iri.”

Iri seemed to be recovering some of her senses. Perhaps the cold water, or the slightly less dire situation were helping, or whatever shock she had been in was wearing off. Iri hoisted herself into the raft. Sylva dived back into the shuttle to grab their packed belongings. Wet, but better than nothing. She returned to the surface. It was hard to carry them, dangling them from her dislocated arm, as she hauled herself onto the raft with her other.

They both lay there, bobbing in the raft on the surface of this alien ocean, staring up at the rapidly darkening sky.